Cheaters

The Best Safelists for March 2010

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Welcome to March and a whole new month of safelist marketing.  Lots of good stuff to talk about this month so let’s jump right in…

First, the big news last month was all about the rise in popularity of safelist cheat software and the safelists owners efforts to fight it.  Well, I am happy to report that the war is over… and WE WON!  Mostly.  Andrew Baxter, the creator of the most popular software made an appearance at Net Marketing Forum and agreed to stop selling and supporting his software.  You can read the whole thread here.

Andrew also states that the developers of several other safelist cheat programs had sent him very angry emails because he had made his software so public resulting in the safelists adding anti-cheat devices.  I guess that confirms that there are still other cheaters out there but at least the anti-cheat stuff is working.

Also I want to remind everyone that while there are people using bots to click your safelist credit links this doesn’t hurt the effectiveness of safelist advertising.  When you spend your safelist credits your credits are used whether or not someone opens your email.  The bots just allow people to earn credits they don’t deserve.  This could result in more emails in your inbox but that also means more credits for you to earn.

There was a pretty huge launch last month.  List Effects is the new viral list builder from two of the biggest names in the safelist and text ad exchange industry.  To be honest, the site isn’t really pretty.  In fact, it looks a little too much like the inside of a text ad exchange… but it’s the results that matter.  And WOW is List Effects kicking butt.  Check the stats below and you will see why I am so excited about this new program.

A not so new program that I finally joined last month is List Building Maximizer.  I don’t know why I waited so long to join this one.  I guess I figure that newer sites aren’t going to have enough members until they have been around for awhile.  Obviously I was wrong.  Based on the stats below List Building Maximizer is crushing it!  If there are other great safelists like this out there that I am missing out on please let me know.

Ok.  Here are my safelist stats from last month.  These stats come from advertising my video splash page for Safelist Marketing Tactics.

Total Clicks

 Unique Clicks Action Sales CTA CTS
List Effects
 1,076 818 104 21 12.71% 2.57%
ViralAdStore 1,520 915 61 18 6.67% 1.97%
ListBuildingMaximizer
 1,757 894 57 18 6.38% 2.01%
Got Safelist 3,808 1,571 50 10 3.18% 0.64%
Elite Safelist 1,396 682 36 10 5.28% 1.47%
List Auction 1,042 737 34 10 4.61% 1.36%
AdSolutionline 2,338 917 26 4 2.84% 0.44%
FreeSafelistMailer 962 466 13 3 2.79% 0.64%

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.  I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.

Not counting the two new sites it looks like I had a slight drop in my overall results from last month.  That could be a result of me playing around with my subject lines.  I am surprised that List Auction continues to drop.  This could be a result of how few emails they are sending out which means less credits for me to earn for my own ads.  It’s nice to see Got Safelist and Elite Safelist doing really well again.

Obviously the biggest winners this month are List Effects and List Building Maximizer. If you are not a member of these two programs yet you are missing out on some seriously good traffic.

I guess that’s about it for this month.  As usual my stats are a result of my efforts and the pages I am promoting.  Your results may not be the same but you can use my stats as a guide for deciding where you should be promoting this month.  How do I know which safelists work best for me?  I track my results.  If you aren’t tracking you are wasting a big chunk of your time.  You can get a free link tracker from TEToolbox.

The Best Safelists for February 2010

The Best Safelists for February 2010

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It just occurred to me that putting the name of the previous month in the title of these posts make them appear outdated the second I post them.  So from now on I will be using last month’s stats to look forward at all the safelists I will be focusing on in the current month.

And it couldn’t have come at a better time because frankly last month sucked.  Not so much for the safelists but for my own productivity.  You can tell just by looking at how many times I updated my blog last month.  I spent yesterday doing absolutely nothing in preparation for being extra productive today.  Considering this is my second post of the day I guess that good but I had also planned on having this done at least 6 hours ago so maybe not so good.

Safelist news!  Oh boy we had finally had some excitement around here.  Usually not much usually happens in this industry but a few months ago some scum bag named Andrew Baxter thought it was be a good idea to create a software product that allows people to cheat credit based safelists.  Basically this software downloads all your safelist emails and clicks all the credit links for you meaning you never need to actually view the ads of other members.

This is exactly the type of software that nearly killed the safelist industry a few years ago.  If everyone started using this software then nobody would be viewing your ads which would make posting to safelists useless.

I happy to announce that last month many of the larger safelists began fighting back by implementing “cheat protection” in their emails in the form of captcha codes that must be entered before you can earn credits.  This and some other techniques appear to be working so far.  It’s also a great a way to find out who the cheaters are so their accounts can be removed from the safelist.

This change couldn’t have come soon enough.  It’s got to be assumed that there are always going to be a small percentage of people cheating but nobody has ever been stupid enough to do it so publicly.  These new security changes should hopefully make safelists even more responsive while cutting down on the number of emails being sent by the cheaters.

Here is the list I have so far of the safelists that have added some form of cheat protection last month for their members:

AdTactics
Elite Safelist
FreeSafelistMailer
Smart Safelist
Target Safelist

If you know of any others please let me know.

Update: Feb 2, 2010
Supreme List, List Building Maximizer, and Global Safelist have also added cheat protection.  Global Safelist is actually using a number matching test like you would see on a traffic exchange.  That’s awesome!

Oh, and if you one of the people who bought the cheat software from Andrew Baxter feel free to ask him for a refund.  I am sure he will be happy to assist you.  If not, I bet paypal will.

Ok, now the fun part.  Here are my safelist advertising stats from last month.  These stats come from advertising my video splash page for Safelist Marketing Tactics.

Total Clicks

 Unique Clicks Action Sales CTA CTS
ViralAdStore 1,488 863 73 15 8.46% 1.74%
List Joe 1,668 1,203 69 15 5.74% 1.25%
List Auction 1,062 684 30 15 4.39% 2.19%
Got Safelist 3,801 1,539 45 9 2.92% 0.58%
Elite Safelist 1,423 750 33 6 4.40% 0.80%
FreeSafelistMailer 1,199 551 23 6 4.17% 1.09%
AdSolutionline 2,155 857 26 5 3.03% 0.58%
Global Safelist 1,521 750 27 3 3.60% 0.40%

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.  I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.

It seems like I received a drop in sign-ups from the big 3 list builders.  It should be noted that these sites are also sending out far fewer emails than they had been a few months ago.  It’s rare now that I am ever able to earn enough credits to send to the maximum number of members.  That means my ads are reaching less people but at least I don’t have to spend all day clicking for credits any more.

Everything else looks pretty normal though it will be interesting to see if the new cheat protection scripts will have much of an effect when I check my stats again next month.

As usual, these are my own personal stats and depending on what you are advertising your results may vary.  This information is simply intended to be a guide for trying out new safelists that you might not already be a member of.  Also, don’t forget to track your ads to find out which safelists work best for you.  You can get a professional link tracker from TEToolbox.